is our machines learning? —

Google buys a D-Wave quantum optimizer

To be shared with NASA and university researchers.

D-Wave's quantum optimizer has found a new customer in the form of a partnership created by Google, NASA, and a consortium of research universities. The group is forming what it's calling the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and will locate the computer at NASA's Ames Research Center. Academics will get involved via the Universities Space Research Association.

Although the D-Wave Two isn't a true quantum computer in the sense the term is typically used, D-Wave's system uses quantum effects to solve computational problems in a way that can be faster than traditional computers. How much faster? We just covered some results that indicated a certain class of problems may be sped up by as much as 10,000 times. Those algorithms are typically used in what's termed machine learning. And machine learning gets mentioned several times in Google's announcement of the new hardware.

Machine learning is typically used to allow computers to classify features, like whether or not an e-mail is spam (to use Google's example) or whether or not an image contains a specific feature, like a cat. You simply feed a machine learning system enough known images with and without cats and it will identify features that are shared among the cat set. When you feed it unknown images, it can determine whether enough of those features are present and make an accurate guess as to whether there's a cat in it. In more serious applications machine learning has been used to identify patterns of brain activity that are associated with different visual inputs, like viewing different letters.

Machine learning is only one of a number of fields within artificial intelligence and D-Wave isn't offering a true quantum computer, so the project's name (the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab) is somewhat overselling the project. But that doesn't mean that useful and exciting work won't come out of it.

This sort of thing always makes me excited. I realize that any real application of the technology is decades away, but still... "HAL, contact my doctor and set an appointment for my annual checkup." or "HAL, inventory the fridge and order a restock of what I'll need for this weekend's cook-out." Best, "HAL, open the pod-bay doors, please."

This sort of thing always makes me excited. I realize that any real application of the technology is decades away, but still... "HAL, contact my doctor and set an appointment for my annual checkup." or "HAL, inventory the fridge and order a restock of what I'll need for this weekend's cook-out." Best, "HAL, open the pod-bay doors, please."

Presumably, Hal would not need to be told to set up your annual checkup. Just sayin'...

It's TWENTY-FREAKING-THIRTEEN!Where is my omnipresent AI assistant? Where's my household robot? Where's my Jetson car? Where's my hotel in space?I've been waiting for this stuff for almost 50 years, and I'm just about tired of waiting.

I thought the puns funny, but they do provide a lot of noise. Now, back on this topic.

I am really interested to see if quantum computing (or quasi-quantum-qomputing if you want to be an alliterive ass whose spelling is prone to causing spontaneous spewing of spittle from the mouths of those that took spelling slightly too seriously) can lead to computers that can run sophisticated AIs. I would like to see this partnership create a system that can sort through the massive amount of astronomy data we have to find new planets and the like.

Sorry to be a pedant, but in your last paragraph, you've described _supervised_ learning. It's a sub-class of machine learning, which also includes unsupervised learning (just throw all the examples into the pot, discover classes by group differences), semi-supervised learning (label a subset of the training set, let the algorithm group the rest), and reinforcement learning.

It's TWENTY-FREAKING-THIRTEEN!Where is my omnipresent AI assistant? Where's my household robot? Where's my Jetson car? Where's my hotel in space?I've been waiting for this stuff for almost 50 years, and I'm just about tired of waiting.